The Brothers Golgo

A search for meaning, goats and pantaloons.

The unremarkable and slightly disturbing tale of goats, pantaloons and insidious, lurking evil. Created in 1996, I have kept it and digitised it in order to allow it to live a little longer. Something tells me I should have allowed to flatline into oblivion but I cannot, I feel compelled to keep it alive... like a comical iron lung.

Random 13

Truth Eye, Rainbow Sky.

A randomised musical creation that tries to maintain some form of structure. The work is created with a number of variations that will create a randomised swing from one side of the arch to the other, where one side has natural images with associated string sounds and the other side uses technological images and technological samples. The random factor is subverted by a strict tempo that allows a form to emerge within the randomised chaos.

Under the Feet of Giants

The high collection of compositions

This was my attempt at a collection of classical pieces; quartets, piano, ensembles. Some of the best work and some oddities.

It is a shame that Papillon (for Poppy) is the only one played by a human with a real instrument as they would all have been improved with such care, but I am glad that particular one received the attention. Played by Billy Cowie and written for my wife, my favourite track and created in a single complete session.

Mainty Joller

A person of disrepute intent on engaging in lascivious behaviour.

There was a time when I was churning out actual music. Music that had been composed and played and recorded. Generally, however, all of this took place in a virtual environment and I used the computer to compose on, to record on, to have it play virtual instruments. Therefore I have some albums of music I created that doesn’t really exist. One day I may be able to get some ‘humans’ to play this music ‘live’ but I may be old and senile by that point.

Video Projects

Various works

Music and video from my time in University as well as anything I have put my mind to since. This includes the videos from the Mainty Joller collection, Antichrist, Dear D and Illusions; plus I have also included the Walking Dead headshots series.

Invocation

A digital ritual

Upon the floor is inscribed a magical circle. In its old world scrawl and intricate design it is reminiscent of medieval demonology and at its centre lies a simple box from which extends a set of headphones. The area around it is filled with a litany of invocation, constantly repeating its ritual; repeatedly drawing down the power of the Architecture into its centre.

Upon further inspection it can be seen that the magical circle is a digital printout. Its inscriptions are related to computer terminology and the revered figures of the computer's creation and development. The sound that occupies the area is computer generated, with computer rendered voices calling upon the power of the Architecture; these voices are referring to the aspects of operating systems rather than aspects of physical space.

In Memoriam: Auschwitz-Birkenau

In memory

Composed for the Holocaust Memorial Day as an orchestral work for various forms of ensemble.

From the beginning invasions by Germany to the end of WWII and the German surrender, the history of the area of land that became known as Auschwitz-Birkenau is represented as a series of astrological snap shots in time. Planetary positions are represented by different instruments and each day by a single beat; major events in that history are expanded into orchestral interludes.

Essays and Papers

Thesis and projects

Sulky A.I.

Artificial Intelligence

I created this AI for a previous incarnation of this web site and have yet to fully iron out the problems. It hits a few brick walls now and then but, for the most part, is able to keep a conversation rolling. It has been designed to be especially arrogant, brusque and evasive in order to hide some of the more difficult issues with a non-learning form of AI; this may or may not make it closer to its creator.

Knemia: Transformation

Musical Magic Squares

Magic Squares are a mathematical phenomenon, which consists of rising integers placed in an equal sided grid, such that the sum of the numbers in any horizontal, vertical, or main diagonal line is always the same number.

A Musical Magic Square is a composition that is formed from individual phrases arranged in terms of their number of beats and placed in an equal sided grid according to the numeric placement of a Magic Square, such that the sum of the beats in any horizontal, vertical, or main diagonal line is always the same number.

The goal was to form a composition that would develop the idea of a Musical Magical Square and explore the idea of transmuting Lead into Gold. The name “Khemia” refers to the Greek name for the ancient Egyptian art of alchemy and the origin of modern chemistry.

Memecom Gateway

A Literary Opera

The Memecom Gateway is a multi media drama, fundamentally a musical and literary journey and is therefore best described as an Opera based, not on the stage, but within the computer. Rather than the musical numbers being sung with instrumental accompaniment, or with dialogue and recitation, the voice is replaced by the written word and subsumed within soundscapes formed from different types of digital sound and voices, human and machine. The soundtrack, literary and visual environments will be effected and formed by user interaction; the user and the art collaborating to produce a unique representation of the complete work. Though the work is essentially non-linear in its format, it still contains a set structure of story development that allows the aural and narrative experience to progress to a finale.

Semantic Syntactic

A Musical Argument

Within the relationship of shared exformation lies the connections between semantic, where the words communicated deal with an inherent meaning, and the syntactic, where the rules that govern the structure of the words implies the meaning. This same process applies to artificial intelligence and computing to some degree.

The Bible, which has so many translations fundamental to its present understanding seemed a perfect choice. With its text beginning at 'the beginning', Genesis and the Creation myth, I thought it would form a good argument set against Darwin's Theory of Evolution. I chose to use the concluding paragraphs of Origin of the Species, which forms the final summation of a lengthy argument.

The music here uses Neumes, Hebrew cantilation and process to show the inherant inability to comprehend the arguments of another without parsing it through our own experience.

The Mojo Squad

A seven part tale of friendship & monster hunting.

As part of my working life I found that I had to be away from home for seven days. As a close little family, such time is difficult for us all and especially so for our three year old boy. I decided to create a 'goody bag' for each day, so he had some small present to open and keep him happy.

The bags I had made and hidden away containedf some tiny toys and a little sweet but the main thing I wanted to give him was a series of paper toys, that I could make just for him. I scoured the internet for interesting and free templates I could adapt and in doing so found a reat collection of characters. I was so beguiled by the collection of tiny paper heros that I ended up writing a story to go with them..

Jeff Noon Projects

Working with the author

I was thrilled to be able to create the covers for Jeff Noons full range of novels and wanted to show them off effectively. There was also many other projects that I found myself lucky enough to complete and all together here it seems like quite a cool body of work.

The Elvis Sessions

A musical anagram of other peoples lives

Philip Thompson is aiming to create sound-scapes & music from his experiences & exploration during 2013. He has invited a number of people to join in (remix, mix, contribute sounds), and I am amongst them. He is providing a set of sounds a month with an open invitation to get involved and this has caught my mind for a number of reasons.

So I will attempt to follow this project by adapting and manipulating the source sounds into what, for some anagramatical reasoning, I am calling them the Elvis Sessions. Remixing Lives, etc. The best part is I don't have to feel guilty if I do not keep up this task but I can enjoy the monthly music making of others. It's a good deal all round.

Hoi Oligoi

A new music collection

I had a number of new pieces of work laying around and through the iPad, a new means to produce them into something coherant. Whilst I went about the tasks of creating music from snippets of ideas and improvised sesssions I also realised that I could revisit my older work. I had a new means of presenting the work in a much higher level of quality than I had previously used. I am not sure why but the original work was never produced in anything other than basic mp3, with all its compression and loss.

Now I have remastered all the previous work and a collection of new material, from the original notation software to a high quality format and released it all through Bandcamp. That is where you can find all future music.

Games Design

Repurposed, modded and original flavours

I started creating my own board games or card games to enterain and delight my son. Beginning with a standard single route baord game called 'Race to Win', with all the ideas and names thought up by my boy. This was followed by a board/card game called 'Inscrutio', designed to be almost unplayable without making up your own rules.

This meant that my mind became re-attuned to board game and card game mechanics and I now look for opportunities to create these ideas in practical form. Some of these designs go back along way and have been waiting for a chance to be created, others are whims and involve a vast amount of work considering how throw-away or silly they are.

The Barebones COmpany

A study group for Historical European Swordsmanship

The Barebones Company is a study group for Historical European Swordsmanship, based upon remote learning and solo practice, drawing a learning plan directly from the resources openly available through printed material and videos provided by study groups.

The basic question of whether it is even possible to learn to fight with the longsword using remote learning and solo practice is debatable, because at some point any theory or training will inevitably have to prove itself by the act of tournament, sparring or competition. However the majority of practice of any art will also be dependent upon personal commitment, self assessment, self awareness and the perfection of solo drills.

We're All Working Together

A Novel

The first novel is released as a self-published book via Amazon, Smashwords and all good bookshops: All novel related material can be found here.

From a post-apocalyptic future, by way of 1970s New York. A doomed island sanctuary in the distant past and a survivalist tribe at the end of civilisation hold the clues for Spider Team to find the man who invented time travel and caused a devastating global disaster.